Beyond the cube: Co-working spaces offer a hipper take on the office

By Matt Haber, Valerie Demicheva and Kathleen Richards

July 21, 2016Updated: July 25, 2016 11:42am

Remember Dad’s office?

Once or twice a year, probably during Presidents’ Day, the old man would bring you to work with him so you could see what the heck he did all day. You’d sit in his desk chair and he’d spin you around till you got dizzy; you’d drink from a paper cup at the water cooler and peek into the break room, where colleagues were pecking at their bag lunches or taking a smoke break.

To your tiny, unformed eyes, this all probably seemed impossibly grown up and glamorous, like something out of a screwball comedy where women wore heels, men wore hats, and everyone traded zingers all day.

But think back: Wasn’t it kind of … depressing? The funnest part was a desk chair? People smoked indoors? And, oh, that sad, wilted tuna sandwich in tin foil. Let’s be honest, offices are a drag. Even the kindergarten-inspired workspaces of the digital age, with their intra-floor slides, beanbag chairs and kombucha taps are, in the words of my former boss, velvet coffins. They’re comfy places to lie down and die.

But what if you can blow up the office, send workers back into the wild where they can feel the cool breeze of freedom? Think how productive they’ll be! Imagine how “outside-the-box” their ideas will be! They might even be (gasp!) happy.

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Port Workspaces in Oakland is a sprawling three-story co-working space in the former Kaiser Mall. Not afraid to bring a little fun to the office, the101 Broadway space includes this 30-foot tube slide (a “gravity-powered productivity booster”) shows. less

Port Workspaces in Oakland is a sprawling three-story co-working space in the former Kaiser Mall. Not afraid to bring a little fun to the office, the101 Broadway space includes this 30-foot tube slide (a ... more

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Port Workspaces’ Kaiser Mall Campus includes a meeting space by designer and architect Because We Can, interior design by Ariel Richardson, a mural by Sean Griffin of GriffinOne, color consultantion by Wade Hine, and overseen by Port Workspaces Co-founder and Project Lead Michael Carilli. less

Port Workspaces’ Kaiser Mall Campus includes a meeting space by designer and architect Because We Can, interior design by Ariel Richardson, a mural by Sean Griffin of GriffinOne, color consultantion by Wade ... more

Photo: Courtesy Of Because We Can

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An additional view of first-floor entry into Port Workspaces Kaiser Mall Campus Custom “iceberg” seating designed by Because We Can provide alternate places to sit, stand and recline. Plain vanilla terrazzo floors have been specially dyed to provide color and vibrancy. less

An additional view of first-floor entry into Port Workspaces Kaiser Mall Campus Custom “iceberg” seating designed by Because We Can provide alternate places to sit, stand and recline. Plain vanilla terrazzo ... more

A custom-designed work bar (by Because We Can) provides warmth to Port Workspaces’ 101 Broadway location at Jack London Square.

A custom-designed work bar (by Because We Can) provides warmth to Port Workspaces’ 101 Broadway location at Jack London Square.

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A lounge area leading to outdoor terrace at Port Workspaces Kaiser Mall includes a bird mural by Amber Iwata and interior design by Ariel Richardson

A lounge area leading to outdoor terrace at Port Workspaces Kaiser Mall includes a bird mural by Amber Iwata and interior design by Ariel Richardson

Photo: Courtesy Of Because We Can

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The Port Workspaces at the Kaiser Mall campus at 344 20th St. in Oakland.

The Port Workspaces at the Kaiser Mall campus at 344 20th St. in Oakland.

Photo: Courtesy Of Because We Can

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A portion of co-working space at Port Workspaces Kaiser Mall Campus, in which a former restaurant was converted to house co-workers. A shipping container in background, one of three, has been converted to meeting rooms. less

A portion of co-working space at Port Workspaces Kaiser Mall Campus, in which a former restaurant was converted to house co-workers. A shipping container in background, one of three, has been converted to ... more

Photo: Courtesy Of Because We Can

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Founded in 2013, the Vault is located at the site of the original Ghiradelli chocolate factory set up in 1851. It offers more corners and rooms for privacy than most offices, plus a dark wooden library and bar.

Founded in 2013, the Vault is located at the site of the original Ghiradelli chocolate factory set up in 1851. It offers more corners and rooms for privacy than most offices, plus a dark wooden library and bar.

Bespoke Coworking is housed at Westfield San Francisco Centre, on the dome level, and includes a reception area, library and office space.

Bespoke Coworking is housed at Westfield San Francisco Centre, on the dome level, and includes a reception area, library and office space.

Photo: Bespoke

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The Archery is seen on Wednesday, July 13, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif.

The Archery is seen on Wednesday, July 13, 2016 in San Francisco, Calif.

Photo: Leslie Santarina, Courtesy Of Mod

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Mod HQ in S.F. is part of a larger space called Archery that hopes to bring its sleek Mod concept — for makers as well as thinkers — to the larger world.

Mod HQ in S.F. is part of a larger space called Archery that hopes to bring its sleek Mod concept — for makers as well as thinkers — to the larger world.

Photo: Leslie Santarina, Courtesy Of Mod

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The retail space at Mod is seen on May 12.

The retail space at Mod is seen on May 12.

Photo: Leslie Santarina, Courtesy Of Mod

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The Mod HQ’s new Archery features a variety of “maker spaces” for woodworking, coffee roasting and photo shoots.

The Mod HQ’s new Archery features a variety of “maker spaces” for woodworking, coffee roasting and photo shoots.

Photo: Jude Fulton, Courtesy Of Mod

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A carving class at Mod, which features a variety of “maker spaces” for woodworking, coffee roasting and photo shoots.

A carving class at Mod, which features a variety of “maker spaces” for woodworking, coffee roasting and photo shoots.

Photo: Maya Konig, Courtesy Of Mod

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The Mechanics Institute is a clubby, well-worn spot that has served San Francisco since 1855. Definitely not set up with the tech crowd in mind, it’s an old-school building complete with a library (above) and a chess room. less

The Mechanics Institute is a clubby, well-worn spot that has served San Francisco since 1855. Definitely not set up with the tech crowd in mind, it’s an old-school building complete with a library (above) and ... more

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

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Timber Borcherding (right) of San Francisco looks through old magazines to study photographs as another Mechanic’s Institute member works on a laptop in the meeting room at the Mechanics’ Institute September 28, 2015, in San Francisco. less

Timber Borcherding (right) of San Francisco looks through old magazines to study photographs as another Mechanic’s Institute member works on a laptop in the meeting room at the Mechanics’ Institute ... more

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

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Renderings of a living room and private offices of Canopy, workspaces in Pacific Heights that offer an elevated design aesthetic, a sophisticated membership program, and a concierge-style amenities program. The space is scheduled to open in September. less

Renderings of a living room and private offices of Canopy, workspaces in Pacific Heights that offer an elevated design aesthetic, a sophisticated membership program, and a concierge-style amenities program. The ... more

Photo: Canopy

Beyond the cube: Co-working spaces offer a hipper take on the office

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This is where co-working comes in. Co-working spaces offer mobile workers and small companies desks, conference rooms, shared Wi-Fi and printers, and sometimes perks, for a daily or monthly rental fee. According to one survey, there will be 10,000 co-working spots worldwide by the end of this year. These range from massive franchises like WeWork, which has a reported $16 billion valuation and locations throughout the United States and in countries like Israel and China, to more bespoke, local concerns with names like Parisoma and Makeshift Society. 42Floors, a website that connects companies to available office space, lists four pages of co-working spaces in the Bay Area at a range of prices. Co-working spaces let workers feel some sense of collegiality without the high overhead of an office and the lab rat-like structure of cubicles, meetings and other traditional trappings.

Co-working is a natural fit for the Bay Area. Like communal living in the ’60s, co-working makes perfect sense in a region where space is at a premium and utopian fantasies abound. And since a business can go from two people to, say, $16 billion in value nearly overnight, it makes sense for entrepreneurs to seek out spaces where they can start small and dream big — or launch their own spaces.

Industrial designer Yves Béhar and two partners are already onto the next co-working iteration, creating a space called Canopy that’s coming to Pacific Heights this fall that will be (according to a release) “a beautiful and authentic local workplace, void of trivial distractions.”

Besides, the next “disruptive” company probably won’t grow out of a drab cubicle farm like the one where your parent toiled: It just may come from one of the following places where people, ideas and design meet. Then again, these might turn out to be cooler, handmade velvet coffins, only without the lids. Only time — and the fickleness of trends — will tell. We visited four co-working spaces (and one that existed before the term was invented) to find out more. Tell your dad.

— Matt Haber

Port Workspaces

A dude in his 20s pulls up a seat next to me at the bar and asks, “Are you new here?” This could be a pick-up scene on a Friday night, but it’s actually a Thursday afternoon, and the dude, Chiel Borenstein, is technically at work. His employer, the energy consulting nonprofit WattTime, is one of 200 companies that have taken up residence at the third and newest location of the Port Workspaces, a sprawling, 60,000-square-foot, three-story co-working space in the former Kaiser Mall in Oakland that includes, among many other things, a bar.

When you work at such a place, striking up a conversation with a stranger is not unusual. When Borenstein finds out I’m a reporter, he begins to gush about working at the Port. “The staff’s friendly. Everyone is so helpful,” he says. “It’s such a fun space to foster creativity.”

He is not exaggerating. To transform a former 1960s-era shopping mall into a dynamic and imaginative community-oriented work environment, the Port spent 15 months planning, designing and remodeling the space. On the ground floor, the vanilla terrazzo floor was dyed a warm ochre. Futuristic-looking furniture called “icebergs,” created by West Oaklands design-build studio Because We Can, are artfully arranged in front of a large colorful mural by Griffin One. Shipping containers double as meeting spaces and conference rooms. You can even work inside a converted walk-in refrigerator, if that sort of thing appeals to you. On the third floor, members can stroll among the ducks on the Kaiser Center Roof Garden or lounge on the spacious outdoor terrace, complete with squishy fake turf, (mini) rolling hills and a thatched-roof tiki bar overlooking Lake Merritt, which is just a block and a half away.

Perks: The Port has some very enticing amenities, to be sure, but they don’t feel like a cheap way to get you in the door. Sure, you can hopscotch down the hallway, partake in a game of Wheel of Fortune pinball and drink as much (free!) cold-brew coffee as your stomach can handle. But you can also just hole up in a cubicle or take a seat at a desk or find a quiet spot somewhere to hunker down and work. This fluidity of workspaces — the Port also has a huge co-working commercial kitchen — results in a fairly diverse membership base, so that the people inside the keycard-protected doors actually look not unlike the people outside. But they all have something in common: “Everyone is here for the same reason,” Borenstein told me. “Be as productive as you can, have fun while doing it, and be successful.”

The first thing you need to know about Mod HQ, a new space in soft launch on Alabama Street in the Mission District, is that it’s not simply a co-working space. Nestled inside a cavernous, light-filled former iron factory, Mod is a part of a larger space called Archery.

Archery is one of those impossible-to-define businesses that have sprung up in the post-industrial economy: a maker space (there’s woodworking equipment and an industrial kitchen as well as workshops for artists) and proof of concept for what its founders, brothers Randy and Brian Stowell, imagine to be the future of work. Already launched in Phoenix, the Stowell brothers imagine building Mods of various sizes nationwide and in Europe (possibly even at airports or business conferences) as customizable experiences to serve the self-directed, mobile workforce that’s outgrown the communal table at Starbucks but isn’t ready for the commitment of a WeWork space. They’re currently accepting applications for the maker areas and offering tours by appointment for the co-working space.

Judging from the perfectly distressed floorboards and clean, ultra-functional furnishings (many custom-built) of Mod HQ, that future looks like a spread from Monocle, the impossibly chic business and culture magazine for jet-setters. On a recent morning, after signing in via an app, I settled into a high-backed chair and got on the Wi-Fi in the 5,000-square-foot portion of the space set aside for co-working. (A solicitous concierge later apologized for not serving me Mod’s signature lemon-ginger-turmeric juice on arrival.)

About a dozen other people pecked away at their laptops while a small group was taking a meeting in one of the private conference rooms. The space was quiet save for Seu Jorge’s Bowie covers from “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” playing on discreet speakers. Pitchers of water and hand sanitizer were placed at several spots around the plant-lined room. The bathroom had Malin + Goetz products, Q-tips, sample-size lip balms, a stain-remover pen and a lint brush should I need to spruce up for a client meeting.

Perks: If I wanted anything from the in-house menu, which includes coffees, juices, “noshes” like mixed nuts ($4) and “nourishes” like a toasted baguette sandwich ($8), I could order it from the app (called Mercí) and have it delivered by another concierge. If I forgot my iPhone charger or wanted a new backpack or wooden desk set for my home office, I could order those, too, and pay for them through the app. All this for $9 an hour or $45 a day. If this is what work is gonna look like, I can tell you that the future will be intuitive, civilized and, if you’re not careful, pricey.

About a century and a half before the idea of co-working even existed, there was the Mechanics’ Institute, a clubby, comfortable members-only library that has served San Francisco since 1855.

Since 1906, the library and chess room have been stacked on several floors of an historic building at 57 Post St. As an alternative to the rising cost of lattes and the competition for tables at cafes around the city, the Mechanics’ $95-a-year membership is a steal. The sunny, space offers plenty of sturdy, dark wood library tables and worn (OK, slightly shabby) leather armchairs as well as access to computers and printers. Improved Wi-Fi speed and a deep archive of books and periodicals and well-thumbed copies of the daily papers sweeten the deal.

To judge from an average day, the membership tends toward retirees with a smattering of younger, grad-student types. I know more than a few journalists and authors who use the library as their daily workspace, and to judge from the absence of cellphone chatter and loud collaborations, the startup community has yet to discover this analog oasis in our tech-mad city. As the old American Express ads used to say: Membership has its privileges.

Perks: Members also get access to the chess room on the fourth floor and invitations to readings, screenings and special events like a Bastille Day jazz concert. All of this, plus the air of so-uncool-it’s-cool make the Mechanics’ more than a place to plug in your laptop: It’s a portal to an older city, one that’s a little shabbier, a little less relentlessly hip and overpriced. I almost don’t want to write about this hidden gem for fear of ruining its pristine not-so-perfect perfection.

The Vault evokes a speakeasy more than a shared workspace. Its classic Barbary Coast architecture befits its Jackson Square location amid rows of quaint antique shops, art dealers and lauded private club the Battery. The Vault has a similar smoky, members-only feeling with its brick walls, dark wood library, vintage trunk bar stocked with premium liquor, leather sofas and a velvety, oversize Bruce Andrews chair.

The space is unusual for a shared workspace in that it offers more corners and rooms for privacy than most communal offices, which typically lean toward an open floor plan. With a sprinkling of small side rooms and several larger spaces containing two to three dozen desks each, the Vault has a retro, reimagined setup for co-working, far from the usual bullpen seating that many tech workers have come to know over the past five years.

“We didn’t want to be in SoMa,” said Vault co-founder Kevin Smith. “This space had history and a unique feel about it.” The workspace is located at the site of the original Ghiradelli chocolate factory set up in 1851, when gold prospectors abandoned their ships at the shore and marched toward the city’s center of debauchery and commerce. Founded in 2013, the Vault seems haunted by ghosts of its Gold Rush past; there’s a certain optimistic and determined spirit in the space, one that the members seem to gravitate toward.

For member Sean Minard, a ShiftSmart co-founder, the Vault gave him a desired sense of community. “We were drawn by the energy,” said Minard, who moved his startup, ShiftSmart — a labor solution platform for part-time workers — from a different co-working space after he and his co-founder were shushed and told to be quiet when they stood up to high-five each other upon acquiring their first user. Minard says that he’s more productive at the Vault because he finds himself hanging out there after work, learning via panels and lectures and socializing with Vault cohorts. The unofficial uniform appears to be a classic Mark Zuckerberg-esque hoodie and T-shirts bearing their own startups’ logos.

Bespoke blurs the line between tech and retail with an eco-industrial, year-old facility that aims to create a collaborative environment for the two often diverging sectors. By providing startups co-working areas as well as access to pop-up shop space, Bespoke offers a rare perk: a place to engage users and customers in person.

Located on the fourth floor of the Westfield San Francisco Centre, the space boasts 37,000 square feet of shared space and private conference rooms that convert into shops along the public-facing wall of Bespoke. This allows companies to connect with mall shoppers through a temporary, but traditional in-store experience to get feedback from potential consumers on products like home devices from Smart Home SF and robots from Beam.

Yet for others among the 75-plus retail tech startups housed within Bespoke, it’s what’s on the inside of the succulent-covered wall that matters more. (The inside, by the way, includes an actual bouldering wall and a darkened library with plush sleeping nooks.)

On the last Thursday evening in June, 100 people filled the bocce ball court for a panel discussion with Comet Labs, Qualcomm and Lowe’s Ventures about supply-chain logistics and data access.

Glanse founder and Bespoke member Evelyn Zoubi was in attendance. Her app startup helps users find sale items with a Tinder-style swipe to the left or right; staying plugged into Bespoke’s network helps keep her attuned to the latest in retail technology as Glanse moves into big data. Zoubi feels her app belongs amid these other retail-focused companies, including on-demand stylists from Boon + Gable Style; inventory fulfillment service Darkstore; and shopping registration information keeper Shopco.

At the end of the panel discussion, as the crowd enjoyed a low-key Mediterranean dinner and wine, some people already had their laptops out and seemed excited to get back to work. After all, digital retail never sleeps.